2015 has already begun, bringing with it many expectations and new things. Something we often overlook, but which is important, is the list of works entering the Public Domain. This status, even if the law changes, must always be respected, and in many countries, such as the United States, interesting works have been released that will surely affect the literary world and the world of ebooks as well.
Agatha Christie, Martin Luther King Jr., Isaac Asimov, and Claude Lévi-Strauss are some of the authors we will have the pleasure of rereading this year, and in different formats and languages, all for free, since in ebook format there is no need to pay for them, as they are in the Public Domain.
The list was published by the Duke University Center for the Study of the Public Domain , publishing not only the list of literary works but also the list of songs and films that have been released this year under this license; if you are curious you can consult it here.
List of works and authors that pass into the Public Domain
- Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
- Hannah Arendt The human condition
- Issac Asimov, Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn
- Simone deBeauvoir, Memoirs of a formal young woman
- Michael Bond A bear named Paddington, with illustrations by Peggy Fortnum
- Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, The ugly american
- T. H. White, Camelot
- Dr Seuss, Yertle the turtle and other stories
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., The Montgomery Story: Step to Freedom.
- John Kenneth Galbraith Affluent society
- Graham Greene, Our man in Havana
- Mary Renault, The king must die
- Truman Capote Breakfast at Tiffany's
- Claude Levi-Strauss Structural anthropology
- Christie Agatha, Tragic innocence
These works are already in the public domain in the United States and some other countries. Remember that intellectual property law isn't the same in every country, and while in Spain the term is usually much longer, in the United States it's 56 years. Even so, this will give us the opportunity to discover incredible new adventures or simply enjoy the academic texts of Martin Luther King Jr. or Lévi-Strauss . Either way, we all win, even if many insist otherwise, don't you think?